Color Them Wonderful
by Equestrienne Dreams
Summary: In which Hope figures out something Scott already knew, and the sweet outweighs the bitter. Superheroing and love are not always compatible, but damn it, they're going to try.


"Wanna race?"

She can't see his face under the helmet, but she doesn't have to. She can _see_ the twinkle in his eyes, the lopsided smirk on his face, as surely as if he were standing next to her, and her own face blossoms in a smile under her own helmet.

"You're on."

He whoops in joy, the sound echoing tinny over the microphone, and the laugh burbles up and out of her before she can stop it. "Come on, Antonia! Let's go!"

He leans forward like a jockey at the starting gate, and she hovers at his shoulder, only just restraining herself from hugging him silly.

On the count of three they take off and then they are _flying,_ zipping through the grass, hurtling through the fragile cloudpuff of a dried dandelion in a flurry of seeds, and she doesn't care about the race any more, she does a loop-the-loop out of sheer exuberance, to be here on a bright sunny day with the man she -

With the man she...

Her brain stalls on the word, spinning its wheels as she loses speed, as she slows and comes to a stop, settling on the ground, her mind still revving at a thousand miles an hour and covering no ground at all.

"Hope!" he shouts, wheeling Antonia around and bringing her to a halt. He dismounts with a swift hop and a pat to Antonia's thorax, and the ant headbutts him playfully before she takes off for parts unknown.

"Going big," Scott warns her, and presses the button.

By the time she's resized herself, he has his helmet off, and when she pops her own he's looking at her with a mixture of concern and bafflement.

"Hope, what -"

Finally, _finally,_ her mind unstalls, and the words spill out of her mouth unchecked.

"I love you."

They're the most honest words she's ever meant in her life, she realizes with a shock, because she _does_ love him. Loves his sense of humor, his laugh, his smile, the way he looks at her, the honesty and tenderness and care in his eyes. Loves how he is a five-year-old one minute and the most mature person in the room the next, loves that he knows when to be serious (well, usually), loves that he can _always_ kill the moment with a stupid joke. Loves the way he holds his daughter, the way he cuddles an upset or terrified ant, the way he always has a drop of water or a couple grains of sugar for Antonia.

Loves the way he kisses her, the way he touches her, the way he feels inside her, the way he makes her feel like she can do anything.

Loves, more than almost anything else, the sheer profound _safety_ of being in his arms.

She loves him so much sometimes she can't breathe with it, and she's the last to know.

His face is carefully blank and her heart hammers, halfway between heartbreak and hope. She knows him, knows that 'blank' can mean anything from 'I'm about to break down in tears' to 'I'm so happy I could scream', knows it too well to give up on them now, but something inside her still quivers in fear.

He unseals his helmet with stiff, jerky movements, takes it off, sets it on the ground.

Walks over to her and unseals hers as well, takes it off, sets it well away.

Then walks up to her, takes both her hands in his, clamps down around her fingers, looks into her eyes and says, "Run that by me again."

"I love you. I am in love with you. God, Scott, I am so in love with you."

She barely has time to see the smile start at the edges of his mouth, crinkle the corners of his eyes, before he nearly knocks her down as he yanks her into his arms and just holds _on_ for dear life.

"I love you," he breathes in her ear, and she starts to shake, because thank God, thank _God, thank_ **_God_** **.** "I love you, Hope." Lips on her cheek, her ear, her temple, and she holds on to him and _shakes._

It's better than flying. The only thing that can beat it, she thinks, can beat hearing the words, is flying with _him._

He loosens his embrace after a moment, pulls back long enough to look her in the eyes and cup her cheek. His thumb swipes at the tears leaking from her eyes, and she's smiling so hard her face aches. He's smiling too, he is _giddy_ with it, and his eyes are shining like stars when he says, "Took you long enough."

"Shut it," is all she can manage before he's kissing her and nothing else matters at all.

"Come on," he says, when they've collapsed to the grass and his hands are beginning to wander far enough south to flirt with public indecency. "Let's go to bed."

"Yeah, okay," she says breathlessly, because right now, she swears to God, she'd follow him to Siberia if he asked so long as he'd be there with her.

They throw open the skylight to the beauty outside, and then they're making love on a sun-drenched tangle of sheets and pillows and she's cursing and trembling and dragging him into her, until finally he manages to pin her down (but only because she lets him, she'll proclaim later, and he'll just nod agreeably and smirk to himself) and takes her with hard, steady strokes until she comes apart under his hands and it's everything and nothing at all like flying.

It's too early in the day to sleep, even for a post-coital Scott, so they just lie there in the sunbeams as the sweat cools on their skin. He strokes her hair absently, and she amuses herself by peppering his chest with kisses before he laughs just a little hysterically and occupies her mouth with his own instead.

It's then that she notices the tears tracing down his cheeks, clinging to his lips, and she kisses them away, kisses his closed eyelids. "Scott, what is it?"

"I just," he says, and takes one of her hands, presses it to his heart. "I love you so much. I love you so _fucking_ much, Hope, I can't even tell you how much, and... God." He lets out a long, unsteady breath, and she leans down to touch her forehead to his. "I love you," he says again, quietly, and his hands tighten around hers just a little. "And now I know it's not just me, and... I'm terrified."

She looks him in the eyes and says, blunt, "So am I."

He chuckles, warm and a little disbelieving. "You? I didn't think you were afraid of anything."

"Scott," she says, more seriously now, "my dad never got over my mother's death. I mean, _never._ Losing her broke him, and I can't... I'm so much like him, Scott. And I'm so scared that one of the ways I'm like him is that it would break me to lose you."

Their eyes meet and hold, and the sunrays beat down on them as they just touch each other - not for sex, this time, but for simple comfort.

"I can't," he says at last, "I can't promise that... well, you _know_ what I can't promise, Hope, because you can't promise the same damn thing. But I think... no matter what happens, no matter what kind of time we have - I think it's worth it." He reaches up to touch her cheek - and she knows that gesture, knows it's the most tender way he can touch her - then slides his hand back to its grip on hers. "I _know_ it's worth it. I wouldn't - I _couldn't_ let you go. Can't let you go. Not for anything. No matter what happens in the end."

There are no words to answer that. Can't be.

So she does the only thing she can, and kisses her answer into the laugh lines around his eyes and the palm of his hand and the curve of his neck and, finally, his mouth on hers.

And when she falls asleep in his arms, his chest rising and falling with every breath beneath her cheek, she holds him just a little closer and, just for now, believes.


End file.
